Virtue and Vice & Vice Versa
by Lady Jaida
Summary: A darker, or perhaps not so much darker, look at Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship. Set during the French Revolution, because you all know Aziraphale in a waistcoat is pretty damn sexy. R&R! *NEW* Chapter Four!
1. Prologue: Heav'n

So, this is the beginning of a more darker take on the Crowley/Aziraphale relationship. Set, for the most part, during the French Revolution, because Aziraphale riding a horse and Crowley in breeches is just too sexy to pass up. Oh, yeah, and God and Lucifer make nookie. R&R. Or lightning will strike you down.****

Virtue and Vice & Vice Versa

Prologue: Heav'n

And the heavenly Father was an angel, too, with a lover to His name. In the pale dawn He took His brightest star into His arms and felt the burning of his being and touched the sides of his thighs, the backs of his knees, the softness of his calves. He felt with His lashes, for the Lord God had lashes in those days, soft and dark, the curve of his angel's cheeks, the softness of his lips and the tickle of his breath.

They made Love on that which was to be Earth.

They made the angels of the air together, the Lord's severity and wisdom birthing the structure of them, the first angel's youth and laughter birthing their innocence.

They were resplendent, replete, in having each other, to touch, and to hold, and to kiss.

And then it all went Wrong.

It was part of His Plan, of course, Meant To Be and all that, but it hurt all the more to see those blue eyes that caressed Him so gently, just in looking, turn away towards other things. The clouds, and what was behind them. The newest invention: Fire. Edges of Heaven that could look out over the precipice of What Was To Come, where the angel would sit with his legs dangling over the edge and wonder the impossible as if it would one day be real, right at the tips of his toes. And there began to be questions in the golden sunshine, doubts in the warm air, distant looks in those blue eyes once reserved for His own image.

When Lucifer, an angel, fell, it was a long time coming. They were two pieces that fit together so well for a time and then, they had broken apart, one to rule Above and one to rule Below. Because of how He trusted his angel, the very first of all of them, he had let him Fall. He had let him Know. It would be a burden, a weight His Love could carry.

...but still He remembered the times, the places, when they nestled themselves in the not quite dirt and laughed as they kissed and kissed as they laughed...

...and still He remembered the silences, the tender, butterfly-winged quiet, what inspired the delicate creatures vivid wings, their trembling flight, when later He began to Create again...

...still, too, He remembered the arc of His angel's wrist as it moved translucently upwards and fluttered translucently down again, thin and without a skeleton yet finely boned...

...and the fingers against His cheekbone, and the kisses to the hollows of His cheeks, and the eyes upon His, knowing as He did that Heav'n was good, and good it was, this Heav'n they made for themselves in the dew-drop air...

...pregnant...

...breathless for change...

So when, later, they met upon a darkened street in bodies they wore like old, custom tailored fedoras, hips at jaunty angles, cheeks flushed with the night, it made sense that millennia of loneliness and longing took its proper course, Lucifer and He on such opposites sides of the multi-faceted spectrum, isolated from their vassals, and indulging in the memories of Love Lost, and they found themselves in each other's arms once again, tangled up so that it was unclear where one body ended and the other began, the black blurring with the white, the good with the bad, until all you could see was Love, and in that love, completion. 


	2. Chapter One: A-rhythms & Adagios

Mm. A Tale of Two Cities, Good Omens style? Not really. But if you get half the references in this chapter, you rock my world. Leave me C&C and that 'eternally grateful' business'll be put into play.

  
  
**Chapter One: A-rhythms & Adagios**

It was, as they say, a long time coming.

In the air which screamed things, no longer whispered confidentially to those who cared to listen, told rumors with the best of the barefoot women in petticoats, and was as malicious as those angry enough to store meat cleavers around their persons, just in case, there was the general consensus that these cries were of change, for change, and with change.

It was the best of times and the worst of times. That generally known fact was at least true, for depending on whose side you were on, the Palace or the Streets Below, feelings could either be looking Up or looking Down, or perhaps even a strange conglomerate mixture of the two perspectives. 

In the Paris streets wine did not run like blood, for it was thinner than the robust life source of the peasants, and they were also growing more and more attached to their blood, in those days. Obviously, they would not let it spill on the cobblestones to be trampled underfoot of others. The only blood they were going to spill was the blood of the Enemy.

It was white and black, black and white, or perhaps red, the color of that barefoot passion, and violet, the color of that equally passive silk clinging willfully to its current position.

The city was no longer, and really never had been, a thrum of perfect life and unblemished concordance. Peasant to peasant it may have been, as it still was, but certainly peasant to merchant and merchant to nobleman there was a certain amount of curl-at-the-lip distaste from both sides. Peasant to nobleman was truly the worst of them all: the hate in one pair of eyes, the matching condescension in the other. It was a fury and distrust wrought of the misunderstanding and pride cultivated on both sides. 

There was nothing to it, then, but blood.

But before all this mess, Aziraphale had truly enjoyed his walks through the lower city streets, watching the small, albeit dirty, children laugh, draw faces with spilled flour on the cobblestone, play prince and princess with their chins tilted up haughtily and their eyes fixed upon the bright sky. He had enjoyed passing by a poor man's inn or two, had enjoyed slipping and watching, unnoticed, the laughter that passed easy amongst the drunken men like beer and rumors were passed between them, easy as he said, and without fees. These were the places where things came free, a man pinching a maid through her thin petticoats, the bright red she turned over her plump cheeks, the smack she repaid him echoing over the men's unwashed, never capped heads, and the laughter that roared up from the watching, and the good humor. It never mattered how many times this scene was replayed. It never got old.

And now the children had grown up thin and nervous, but beneath that nervousness there was anger. They had the pretence of defeat in the way their backs stooped just slightly, though they were still young to the world, and the way their hands writhed, clutched before them in beaten turmoil. But in their eyes, snapping back and forth, was that same haughtiness Aziraphale had seen as they played prince and princess on the street corner, only now they weren't playing games anymore, and they stepped heavier upon the cobblestone ground, gleaned what spilled flour they could find for suppers of thinning gruel.

And the women hid weapons or notes or money they had stolen in their bosoms, walked with a swish to their hips that contradicted the men's act of hunched grovelling. In their dangerous eyes and the flush of their cheeks and the proud line to their backs they spoke volumes, how they would not be ignored and they would not be destroyed. It was the women, Aziraphale thought to himself, who must have started it all. They were the wisest, or at least, they had the hunger for that wisdom aching behind their breasts. For their children, they would not have back alleyways and winter chill and winter cough and winter funerals. For their children, they would have the sunshine, and gardens, and feasts of power, not equality.

The fraternity, then, involved the women, too.

A brotherhood of the angry and oppressed, a sisterhood of the driving force behind them.

_We will have what is rightfully ours_, the air chanted, but the nobleman turned their backs against it and their ears to midnight music, and the world writhed like the men's twisting hands, in the agony of riot soon to come.

And also the inns had no open doors, now, had shuttered windows and bolts that locked from the inside thrice more than once. The maids had grown older and they sat around the few crude tables resting their feet up on stools. The younger maids who had come to replace them -- for there were always those rushing for what few jobs there were, so desperate were they for work -- had a glint to their eye that was metal, like the sharp blade of a butcher's knife. Together, in these cramped spaces, the men and the women passed anger back and forth between them, instead of laughter, mistrust and outrage free of charge from one chest, through one mouth, into another, and passed along indulgently. Hate was the one thing they truly owned. Hate for those who crushed them down, gave them nothing while they sat on velvet and had everything they desired. 

Hate, close to love, closer still to change, fueled all great transformations. Hate and dissatisfaction.

Aziraphale had seen it all happen a thousand times over in a thousand different places. A place before time began as this world knew it was the first, love which birthed hate which birthed change, and wrecked in its foamy wake all that a reluctant few held near and dear to their hearts.

Aziraphale, who walked these Parisian streets now with his eyes cast low, spectacles tucked into his waistcoat pocket so the world around him would become a blur to his eyes, and he would not have to see it. He was not hiding. Rather, he was preferring to remember, in this moment of solitude, the world he wished so deep inside of him he could once again visit, but knew in that same place that he could not.

He was watching now, with his myopic and half-focused eyes, a scene unlike any other unravel before his eyes.

On the hungry, bleeding streets of Paris, a wine barrel on its way to the Palace had broken open, flooding the streets with rivulets of red between the broken cobblestones.

It was as if the earth had opened up, belching forward that pain which had lain for so long dormant inside it.

Curled up around those trickles of wet color against the gray were children, men, women on their knees, drinking in with the dirt and the gravel of smashed cobblestone such sweetness they could not pay for in their own lives. Like beggars, they kept the bruise from their bent knees with the torn hems of their clothes rolled up as cushions. One child sputtered and choked on the stuff, but could not stop himself, thin hands grasping at the sustenance which flowed slowly away, so slowly, but just fast enough to be lost between his equally thin fingers. 

It was a last supper, Aziraphale supposed, for the poor.

It was also the last straw, the last bit of time running out, for the rich.

"Did you do it?" Aziraphale asked knowing, turning his head towards the sky in contemplation.

"Yes," said Crowley, who leaned in the darkness beside him, "I did."

"Was it your goal to rob them of their pride?" Crowley shrugged, watching in what appeared to be disinterest from over one fingernail. Hidden in the shadows, Aziraphale could not see his eyes.

"Was it _your_ goal to watch them like a theatre piece?"

"No," Aziraphale said, "I was taking a walk."

"A bit far from the palace," Crowley mused softly, his eyes on the scene before him. A little girl cried out, bowing her head over a bowl made by one broken cobblestone, where a horse hoof had kicked a dent into the stone once, long ago. The wine pooled into the hollow as if it were a fountain, and she, lips stained with wine as they might one day be stained with her own blood, drank greedily from it, drunk not on the liquid but on her own, sudden power, a place where she _had_ and the others around her _did not_.

"Mm," Aziraphale said. He was watching the same thing. It was one thing, a wonderful thing, Aziraphale supposed, to possess. But possessing without the ability to hold your belongings up, displaying them before those who lacked all but the will to survive -- that was the true point of riches. To have when others had naught.

"Who issss to ssssay," Crowley said suddenly, leaning forward out of the shadows, his snake eyes glinting and that sibilance coming almost unbidden to his lips, "that what I have done wassss cruel or sssselfisssh. Who issss to ssssay that I have not given thesssse foolssss a gift?"

And Aziraphale was speechless as the song of the air struck discord into the hearts of men, women and children alike, as the discord of these bodies struck equal a-rhythms into the depths of angels and the blackened blood of their counterpart demons. 


	3. Chapter Two: Battlefields & Bedrooms

Well -- here's chapter two. Please, tell me what you think! ;.; I thrive on C&C, and I love to know what people would suggest, change, blah, blah. Just R&R!

****

Chapter Two: Battlefields & Bedrooms

While the world was in agony over the omens of change, and the portents brought about in the sky, storm-clouds from the storms in the hearts of the people, the powdered men and women were having a masquerade ball beneath the vaulted, glimmering ceiling of the Marie's favorite ballroom.

Aziraphale did not thrive on parties or on the crush of bodies, or on the laughing but demure women mingling with the distilled men in dark velvet waistcoats. It was both glitter and gold, certainly, but it was also the type of beauty he did not prefer to be a part of. Too cultured and too contrived.

With powdered breasts and constrictive corsets, the women swished across the dance floor, masks held up to their porcelain faces, long lashes blinking behind the bejeweled eye holes.

With cultivated swaggers the men moved back and forth between groups of those rustling silk-and-velvet-gowned noblewomen, watching the arc of their necks and the delicacy of their wrists in secret from behind their own costumes.

His own mask, orange and black, mimicked an out of proportion monarch butterfly, but was nowhere near as fragile or as beautiful, in all its gaudiness.

There was still something about this world that he enjoyed, not the pomp and not the pretence, but rather the glamour. It was attractive. It was most attractive when the men and women knew that it was, and they wore their attractiveness like costumes at a masquerade ball.

High above them all, the great diamond chandelier caught the light in a thousand refractions, like a miniature model of the sun, angled edges speaking of riches, of power, of the light-headed feelings good wine gave you, of the wonderful aching in your stomach as you wondered whether or not you were a part of these beautiful people and their asexual dancing.

A woman dropped a fan at his foot.

He picked it up and returned it to her. From behind its helpless fluttering she smiled up at him through her lashes, which blinked suggestively up at him. A diamond sequin glinted at the corner of her left eye.

"Er," Aziraphale said, "would you excuse me."

"You are quite the dangerous man," said a familiar snake mask that had half-followed him all night, as he pulled away from the young woman and her trembling lashes, her quivering, powdered bosom. "The gentlemen should all make sure they keep their daughters away from you." The blue eyes of a butterfly turned to catch the gold reptilian slits of a verdant, silkily embroidered snake.

"I didn't know you were invited to this party, Crowley."

"I never am," Crowley said, sipping a glass of wine with the grace of a nobleman and the carelessness of a peasant. "It isn't fair, I don't think, that you're always invited to these soirees, and I'm always the one who actually wants to go to them."

"They're your sort of crowd, my dear," Aziraphale said, walking along the edge of the ballroom, where wallflowers blossomed miserably and elderly women gossiped of dresses and jewels and bedrooms while their elderly male counterparts spoke to one another of battlefields and stately rumors and the vintage of that night's wine. Crowley followed him, winding through the crowd with the ease of one well accustomed to such crafty mobility. He, like every snake in the grass, was at home with his body, and that agility was enviable, splendid, catching to the sort of eye which wished to follow all that it did not yet possess.

"I'm offended that you'd make such general assumptions, angel," Crowley said, rustling by a particularly attractive young thing and giving her such a smoldering look it was a miracle indeed she didn't faint on the spot.

"I mean," Aziraphale clarified, "that you fraternize much better than I myself do."

"No," Crowley said firmly, "you meant that I like to have my cake, and eat it, too, as do a few unnamed members of royalty here at this tremendous gathering tonight."

"Perhaps."

Marie was splendid on this night. Her silk was so soft, so incomparable, her velvet crushed and of a midnight blue, the lace on the edges of her sleeves more than most country house cost, and it was the deep wine red of blood. At her ears were opals, black opals, sparkling all the colors of the women's dresses, in a setting of gold. Funny they were called black, when they were a mixture of all colors, dancing vividly as they caught the light.

Her hair was done up in a tower of white, soft curls framing her laughing, carefree face. Diamonds and flecks of gold adorned each curl, pinned into the wig to follow a perfectly precise design.

Her eyes were dark with what might have been kohl, the only suggestion that she could have been portraying an exotic Egyptian princess, Cleopatra perhaps, and had not come to her own masquerade ball dressed merely as herself.

She held in one hand a glass of wine that she drank from continuously and, as if she had Dionysus under her power, or a few cherubs at the very least, it never lost an inch of the glimmering drink inside it. In her other hand she held a white glove, and it looked soft, like a downtrodden dove still pure and chaste against the splendor of her baroque display.

"Isn't she lovely?"

"Hm?" Aziraphale turned back to Crowley. They had stopped moving, now, watching the queen through the blush of dancers, across the dance floor.

"The queen. The perfect example of a Bosch."

Aziraphale could not disagree. 

From beneath the hem of her embroidered skirt, one could harbor the impression they saw the hands of all spoilers-of-the-land, the teeth of all drunkards and the tongues of all gluttons licking out at her finely stockinged ankles.

"What do you say, angel?"

"Mm?" Again, Aziraphale had lost concentration. He got this way always before something big happened, as if he were listening to nothing but the twang of foreboding that hovered just above his head in the air.

"I said, shall we dancssse?" That sibilant whisper, inviting, daring him, or turning him, to temptation's enticing path. It was a time for a king to fall, a time for thrones to be overturned, and in such times Up became Down and Down became Up, as if the very fiber of all that was Common Sense was suddenly frayed. "Really, angel, if you don't dance at least once, there's no point at all for you to make your appearance at these sort of evenings." Crowley licked his lips and tasted wine upon them. The Gavotte had ended and the partners were bowing to each other, women little curtsies and men stiff half-bows.

"Delighted," Aziraphale murmured, offering out his hand.

It was the Saraband, next, a slower dance, music lilting with their bodies and humming in their veins. If they had any at all.

"Truly," Crowley said from behind his mask, lips brushing over the side of Aziraphale's cheek, "they are fools. They think because they play this loud music that knock will not come to their door. They think if they cannot hear it, it has not come."

"It will make things more pleasant, at least," Aziraphale murmured, feeling drowsy deep down to his feet. The music was like a lullaby, Crowley's body like a cradle.

"Blood will run like wine on this floor soon enough," Crowley sighed, "and no music will be loud enough to block out the cries that will fill this hall. Whether they are of triumph, or of pain, or perhaps of something else entirely."

"Why are you here?" Aziraphale asked, after paying proper respect to the prediction they both knew would prove true soon enough. Perhaps in a week, perhaps in a month, perhaps even in a year, but it was coming. 

The People had no bread.

The Nobles complained of too much cake.

_God's will be done_, Aziraphale thought.

"There is sin here," Crowley replied, and Aziraphale did not know whether he carried sin with him like a rat carried plague, or whether he drank it up like children did spilt rivers of wine in the city streets.

Outside the tall, curtained windows with their spotless glass panes, the dark night looked over a city that had no dance left in it, no music left for dance, no heart left for music. 


	4. Chapter Three: Cream & Cufflinks

****So, here's chapter three. It's one of my favorites. Keep reading and keep telling me what you think! ::miffles:: I wanna know. :p So R&R! ::hops off::****

Chapter Three: Cream & Cufflinks

Aziraphale woke to the sound of rain. 

Inside, where it was safe and warm, he could look down upon the city, arms wrapped around himself, hair tousled from sleep, eyes catching lightning as his ears caught thunder.

...on the streets far outside his window men who worked in the early dawn light turned their collars against the rain, hurrying beneath awnings until they could finish their work and get out of the wet chill...

...the damp, gray sky was angry looking, like an old bruise finally fading...

...a woman or two stamped their feet down and hurried from doorway to doorway, perhaps bringing news of a birth, or a death, or a marriage, perhaps bringing only idle gossip, but it was no doubt more, for their determination could be felt in the pregnancy of the humid rain...

He was too far away to even see any of it, but he knew all this was happening.

And he was not a part of it.

Rich or poor, healthy or sick, young or old, he was not a part of anything of the earth.

...one child scurried in between newly formed puddles, sallow in the grayness, body thin and small yet there was still some life to him, causing splashes as he went, finding some comfort in the cleanliness of the rain...

...and it began to wash dirt free of the streets, it had been a long time since the last rain...

...and it also washed free the stench of wine rotting in the cracks of the cobblestones from the heat...

Aziraphale dressed in this eery, almost unnatural light and brushed his hair back, tying it up in a loose silk bow. Not for the first time he caught himself examining his reflection in the full length mirror beside his bed, the lines of his wrists, the curve of his cheek, the width of his waist, the blue of his eyes. Little things like that he had never thought to explore before, the way a shirt would compliment this aspect of his figure, or that tint to his eyes.

It was something in the air, he decided.  
  
And the cufflinks that he wore, a gift he had received at the beginning of the century from Crowley, were the one thing he examined the most. Black opals, more discreet than Marie's had been, much small, much less garish, but they were a stone Aziraphale particularly liked, especially the way every color you could name and some you could not were flecked, to each their own own moment of contrasting opaque vividity down to the very depths of them.

His wrists felt delicate, when he wore them.

It was not, perhaps, the most conventional way of thinking for an angel, for they were beings not supposed to understand or even care about their own beauty, but Aziraphale was interested in the human body he had never properly explored. It was one he had worn for many, many years, becoming accustomed to, but not familiar with, it.

Aziraphale thought perhaps a cup of tea and some breakfast would do him more good than any mirrors or any windows or any stagnant rain could.

The mood of the Bed & Breakfast was heavy, noble-men and -women listless and lacking laughter, up for no reason at all, except for the rain of course, at this unusually early hour. Breakfast was served early by the starched, proper matron who ran the establishment, and Aziraphale settled himself down in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea, a slice of buttered toast and a good book to distract him. He had selected something that would keep him properly interested, Dante's Inferno, and though it was a rather unapropos for angelical reading, it was one of Aziraphale's favorites.

He had always liked good books.

The cream for the tea was sweet and the sugar sweeter. It was perfect for the early morning, perfect to improve his mood. The music to a saraband was still playing, unnervingly, throughout his mind, or perhaps throughout his heart, when it had not been doing so a few moments before.

"Mm," said a lyrical voice over his shoulder, "not exactly my style, but to each his own, mm?"

Behind Aziraphale stood Israfel, lounging with his elbow on the back of Aziraphale's chair, lips curved up like a few lines of music. He had eyes that were almost colorless, a page before a musician sat down to compose a symphony that had been carried around in his womb for months. Those very eyes scanned the few lines of the page Aziraphale had opened to, and then shrugged.

"Really," he went on, "it's a little bit too much."

"It's been a while," Aziraphale said, and closed the Inferno.

"All the music here has died," Israfel sighed, shaking his head. In the motion was the jingle of frost on the air and the tremble of robins in their trees. Music was not just notes breathless on a page or notes vibrating from an instrument. Music was the movement of all God's creatures, the sound of the air changing around their bodies, the murmur of their sighs, the faint tremor of their breath and the steady bass of their heartbeats. 

"Is that why you've come?"

"A lot of us are around," Israfel said vaguely, sitting down in a chair that had previously been across the room, taking up in his graceful hands a cup of tea that had not been there before. "There is, you know, talk."

"It isn't just Paris?" Aziraphale felt grim.

"No," Israfel said. Places in the world were microcosms, replicas of all heavenly goings on. Paris, then, was reflecting some turmoil between Below and Above, feeling the ripples of malaise from that which it could not see and could not touch, and could only build skeletal churches to. "It's been a while since I've visited here, from Back There," the angel of music went on, "things really do change."

"The potential for change on this plane is greater than that on any other," Aziraphale murmured softly. That was why earth fascinated him. No one day was alike in any way to any other. Ageing a day made the people upon it change, the different air breathed in and out made the people upon it change, and in ten years the world could have transformed so drastically that it would be unrecognizable to an eye that had not watched it all, seen it all, and loved every moment of it.

"There is the smell of demons on the air," Israfel said, after he finished his cup of tea. Aziraphale did not flush or blink, though he knew Israfel could smell Crowley's scent upon him.

"There will be Death here, soon."

"Ah," Israfel murmured, "but Death, sweet, songless Death, is neither demon nor angel, Friend nor Foe, God nor man."

_And he will be here one day soon for all of us_, Aziraphale thought, unbidden, a prophecy that came to his mind swiftly and suddenly and left even before Aziraphale could catch it, and mull it over properly.

"I suppose I must get going," Israfel said finally, once he had finished three cups of tea, and he and Aziraphale had sat for a while in comfortingly companionable, angelic silence -- for angels did not need to speak, and gained more pleasure sitting side by side in the company of those that were their equals than talking about all the incredibly disheartening and dismal things they happened to Know. "You see, the queen is having a party to-night -- I hear tell she throws them all the time, and there is such music, such dancing, as you would never see again on this green earth! I wouldn't wish to miss is, or miss to wish it, if you know what I'm saying, not when I will never get another chance, they say, to see such gaiety again." Aziraphale nodded.

"I have been," he said.

"What was it like?" Israfel asked, then, "no, don't spoil it for me, I shall see for myself to-night. Perhaps I will see you there, and perhaps not, but I must say, those cufflinks are quite lovely, Aziraphale, but do make sure not to wear them around those smarter and more powerful than I am, for they reek of Below, and you can't be too careful."

...the children pressed themselves up against cracks in doorways in the depths of the city, listening to secrets they did not understand...

...puddles began to rise, like a flood of despair along the darkened streets, and it gave the women power as the watched it, for they thought that perhaps this was as Noah's flood, and only the city would be saved, while the bright lights and the sweet perfumes and the expensive silks of the palace would all be washed away by the waves rising higher...

...and somewhere in the city a demon was laughing in the rain, right outside the closed doors of an inn called _La Fleur de la Libertie_, where the light of a few weak candles shone through the slats in the window-shades, but offered little comfort to the cold world those gathered inside had locked away from sight... 


	5. Chapter Four: Diadems & Drama

Chapter four, whether you wanted it or not. In which Crowley and Aziraphale dine, and Crowley chats with Israfel at the theater. R&R because...I'm demanding like that. E

**Chapter Four: Diadems & Drama**

He did not go to Marie's ball that night.

He dined instead with Crowley in Crowley's expensive city flat, above the glinting lights of Paris, perfect for a gentleman of some social standing, such as Crowley had carved himself out to be.

"I saw Israfel today," Aziraphale said, over their second course of Canard a l'Orange.

"Mm," Crowley said around his glass of wine, "and I had the pleasure of talking to Belphegor."

"So it isn't just Paris, or France," Aziraphale said, frowning.

"Let's not talk about it."

"They must be here for some reason, after all, and we won't know until it's happened what that reason is."

"Angel."

"On the whole, I feel quite confused," Aziraphale said, slicing through the meat on his plate. Crowley watched him and laughed, a low, bemused little chuckle, for it was rare that demons laughed with things, as they only truly knew how to laugh _at_ them.

"Why don't we not talk about it?" Crowley tried again, sighing as Aziraphale ruffled up under his laughter. "The duck won't sit well on your stomach if you're upset like this. Besides, they always figure it out, without really requiring our help in the first place. They don't really need us, and if they did, they'd waste no time in explaining everything."

"Mm," Aziraphale mused over his own wine glass, "I suppose."

"What did Israfel have to say?"

To their unspoken but incredibly important Agreement, they shared all they knew, knew all they shared, and never felt quite guilty about any of it. They weren't betraying either side because what they lost in information they gained back equally. Everything was balanced out neatly and evenly. 

They weren't doing anything wrong.

Not really, in any case. It was their own code of ethics, one they had operated on since the middle ages, and by now it was so ingrained into their routines that they couldn't have changed it even if they wanted to. Besides, they were friendly, knew each others favorite type of wine, favorite authors, favorite colors, little, silly things like that. They didn't want anything to change or, not between the two of them, at least.

"Nothing really," Aziraphale said, "just that he liked my cufflinks, and I'd better be more careful about whom I allow to see them, in the future." His eyes met Crowley's and a flash of not anger, not concern, but an unnamed something, as it glinted dangerously in that serpentine gold.

"Was he threatening you?"

"I don't know. No. At least, I don't think so." Aziraphale ran his finger around the rim of his wine glass. "In any case, they are very nice cufflinks, Crowley." As if they were trying to prove Aziraphale's point the black opals caught the light and shimmered enticingly.

"Mm." Crowley was frowning. 

"As you said," Aziraphale murmured, fidgeting, "why don't we not talk about it? The duck was _very_ good, as well. My compliments to the chef."

"Come on, then," Crowley said abruptly, "or we'll be just out-of-fashionably late." He snapped his fingers and the dishes were clean, the table set neatly as it had been when they sat down to eat, and the candles had in a puff of air snuffed their waxen bodies out. In the darkness the bottle green of Crowley's suit was dark as the first forest Aziraphale had ever seen, and the gold of his waistcoat was richer than the crown of even the wealthiest king. "Angel?" Crowley paused by the door. "Something the matter?"

"Not at all," Aziraphale replied quickly, standing and sliding his chair back in to the table neatly. "Shall we?"

"Why, yes," Crowley said, taking the blonde's arm in his own, "I think we shall."

They rode in a carriage that had impeccable timing in appearing before Crowley's door as they were leaving, through the streets, bumping along the broken and groaning ground. 

In the air it was heard now, those whispers Aziraphale had been feeling down to his marrow, or what passed for his marrow, in any case. Even the horse could feel it, nostrils wide against the oncoming storms of fire and blood.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it starting raining frogs in this city," Crowley muttered, to break the silence.

"Mm," Aziraphale agreed, looking out the curtained window cautiously, uncertain as to what he would find there. They passed by houses livelier than people yet still resembling dank, gray gravestones, haphazardly strewn about, now huddling as close together as possible for meager comfort to their sorrows. One woman stood with a shawl pulled tight around her chest, giving their coach a look of such venomous hatred that Aziraphale felt sick to his stomach and hurriedly pulled the curtains shut again, riding the rest of the way to the theater in blinded silence. It was not Love but Justice who was blind, which was why such times as these must first ache and writhe in prenatal contractions before the hand of God set them to birth, burning and bleeding new nations.

The Opera House was a different scene altogether, set in the hush of muted living, all the theater-goers already in their seats, as Crowley and Aziraphale were eight minutes and forty-six seconds late, and the curtain had already risen over the ostentatiously decorated stage. Aziraphale disliked missing the very beginning, where the lights were dimmed and whispers were silenced and the world around him was blanketed by drama, like a dream, and one he could always wake from. But he, whenever he went places with Crowley, found he was always late, and missed these delicate beginnings he so enjoyed.

"Go on to our seats, angel," Crowley said, ushering him off with his ticket, "I'll be along in a moment."

The great lobby of the Opera House was silent and glittering like a room of jewels in the faint light, everything cast into delicious shadow as Aziraphale's footsteps faded off down one carpeted floor. Crowley stopped breathing for a little while and just listened, hard and long. Somewhere an old woman with a beauty mark beneath one lip coughed softly behind a fan. Then he heard it, the memory or prediction or both of music in the air.

"Issssrafael," Crowley hissed to that singing air, but he was not talking to himself. From behind a Corinthian column Israfel stuck out his head, and followed it with his entire body.

"You could be more polite," Israfel pouted, "that was a fantastic party and the music of Marie's laughter is simply unprecedented. Like a string quartet, you know. She really is quite...well, something. Quite a study, if you will."

"I don't want to talk about queenssss," Crowley said, dangerous for his calm, for the little slither in his voice, "I want to sssspeak of cufflinkssss."

"Ah," Israfel said. "Of the opal sort?"

"Yessss."

"And of the angel Asirafel who wears them?"

"Yessss."

"You needn't get your scales in a prickly, Crawly," Israfel murmured, looking cheerful, "did he tell you I threatened him? Angels don't threaten, you know, they smite without warning, Justic is swift and fierce, and I'm certainly not the best sort for smiting, in any case. And far as I know, Asirafel has not yet done anything to require punishment. I was merely commenting on how nice his cufflinks were.

"I ssssee."

"You have, I must say, quite excellent taste in adornment." It seemed perhaps as if Israfel was not speaking of cufflinks any longer. Crowley's imperturbably nonchalance, though, was almost unnerving to Israfel's sense of musicality. In the composition of the world, Crowley was a wrong note. An interesting and unusual wrong note, but a wrong note nonetheless, that slipped into the general, universal harmony and lingered, the hum of discord.

"Thank you."

"We all fraternize with the enemy," Israfel said suddenly, "you needn't feel hunted, or even particularly special."

And he was gone.

He left a bitter taste in Crowley's ears, because they were enemies, and Crowley paid no mind to it because he knew he had affected the angel more than the angel had affected him. Angels -- other than Aziraphale, of course -- offended his sense of corruptions with their overwhelmingly obnoxious purity.

But Aziraphale, bows in his hair, enjoyment of the theater, flustering tendencies and almost-passion for a good supper of Canard a l'Orange, wasn't like them. Perhaps it was because they had been around each other for so long that their scents had mingled and that purity didn't disrupt Crowley's blackened anti-soul. Perhaps it was a purity he had grown used to, or even enjoyed in the form of envy, or lust, for that was how demons loved all things. From the very filth of their scaled chests.

As Crowley made his way after Aziraphale to their reserved box, he heard in the air a sound like a terrible cry, as if a great mouth had opened like a wound in the earth, pouring forth a cry of fire and pain that rent the air, tearing the flies of the evening into wingless bodies floundering in an echo of despair.  



	6. Chapter Five: Eternity & Effigy

**Chapter Five: Eternity and Effigy**

It was when the violinist had a solo on the center of the stage and the strings of his instrument were vibrating in breathless passion beneath his fingers and his bow. 

It was when the ladies in their equally breathless anticipation leaned on the edge of their seats, eyelashes and fans fluttering, lungs compacted beneath the crush of their whalebone corsets.

It was when the men moved forward lazily to watch the rapid rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall of the ladies' powdered bosoms from beneath their hungry eyelids.

It was on the high C that pierced the air sharper than any knife, went rocketing up to the rafters swifter than any bullet, resounding in their ears and resounding in their hearts more monumental than any revolution.

It was when one young woman became so excited by the climax of the piece that she crushed her program in her palm, beneath her delicate and soft and feminine fingers.

It was at this moment of _rayonnement_ that had hearts beating off their regular rhythms, had eyes wide open and thoughts silenced as breaths were silenced in worshipful reverence, the church of music, the eternity of a high C, the tears in the violinist's bleary, wondering eyes, the thoughts of a demon returning or turning for the first time to memory, a silence uninterrupted by anything but that infallible, ineffable, melodious note, the glisten in a poor man's eyes over the amazement he gets in his heart from spilled wine running like time through his fingers.

It was the death of the first nobleman, a blonde chap with dark, proud eyes, riding his horse through the lower city over the dirty streets which seemed to him as hell might look -- not that he would ever see hell, a good Christian man, an upstanding and wealthy man -- but perhaps yet more distasteful than even hellfire was the pollution of the streets. His name was Jacques Lepaix and a woman killed him with a knife she would have used to cut meat had she meat in her kitchen to cut. She killed both him and his horse and tipped her head back like a wolf, laughing up early to the sickle moon, which was a green and jealous color. Lepaix's blood ran like wine in the streets and his mouth was opened in a shocked, perhaps even amused 'O,' as if he were laughing at a good joke, not yet knowing his death was the punchline, not yet knowing he was laughing at himself. Or the husk that was all that was left of his self.

It was the laughter of that woman, bosom heaving in rhythm to the violin played in the Opera House, that made it happen, the air crazy, writhing in madness, and therefore without remorse and without kindness, its souls tainted and sullied from it beyond the repair of salvation in penance.

It was then that Aziraphale doubled over in his seat with an undignified grunt of pain, anguish convulsing beneath his skin, the agony of hate pounding in his ears, white hot light flashing like a headache before his eyes in sin, a fire he did not know in his veins.

They did not carry blood.

They pumped virtue, forgiveness, a platonic angel love that was innocence itself, chaste, love that was love because it did not know better, did not know how to hate or even the true nature of what hate was.  
  
Angels had never felt hatred, it was not in their natures, it was a general poison to their systems as goodness and virtue was a sickness in demons, and so they could not possibly begin to understand it at all. In turn, it wounded them, until they grew callused enough to be protected from it.

But the force of such hatred, undiluted, unfiltered, unbridled, was too powerful for Aziraphale to ignore or even to withstand. He curled in upon himself with a soft, pained whimper, arms wrapped tight around his middle as he convulsed against the spiritual invasion.

"Angel," Crowley questioned, leaning forward, trying to get a good look at his face, "Aziraphale. What's wrong?" He was worried, or at least as worried as he ever got, or ever could get. Aziraphale bit back a whimper.

"...think...fresh air..." What Aziraphale meant was, he didn't want to cause a scene in the refined setting, or, God forbid, disrupt the beautiful music he had so been enjoying.

"Right, " Crowley said, matter-of-fact, and helped Aziraphale to stand, holding tight to one of his arms. To Aziraphale's credit, and Crowley was quite proud of him for this, the angel managed to get out into the hall simply by leaning on Crowley's arm, and then collapsed against him. "Come on," Crowley soothed as best he coul, taking that half-limp, trembling body into his arms, cradling the angel close to his chest as gently as his nature would allow.

Outside a star shone brightly over the city of Paris, glinting on and off, on and off in guidance.

Inside their carriage, Aziraphale was curled up tight into a ball, half in Crowley's lap, his fingers knotted in the soft velvet of Crowley's coat.

"I spoke with Israfel," Crowley said to distract his companion, running his fingers through Aziraphale's hair. Silky and golden and long, perhaps a bit too feminine for some tastes, but Crowley liked it, like the way it slid through his fingers like a golden fall of water.

"Nn," Aziraphale whispered.

_The streets were so, so angry for the feet that pounded over them, angry, and the blood that had been spilled upon them, thicker than wine, unexpected, unready to meet the cold and unforgiving cobblestone earth._

"How are you feeling now?" Crowley asked, touching the soft curve of Aziraphale's cheek with the very tips of his fingers, tentative, hesitant, more unsure than he had ever been in his entire, remorseless life.

"Nn," Aziraphale murmured, leaning just slightly intot he touch. His body felt on fire with the anger that wracked the night.

_The hands of the men, women, children, cracked and weathered, lined with age, short lines on young hands, uplifted to the sky, questioning not the men and women who filled them with their hate, but the cycles of the moon and the burning of the sun and the contentment, far away, of the stars._

"It's been a long time," Crowley murmured absently, and he brushed the corner of Aziraphale's mouth with his his pinky almost by accident, "since anyone called me Crawly. And," he added thoughtfully, "since anyone has called you Asirafel."

"Crowley," Aziraphale mumbled into the demon's side, and he winced again, "they're killing people -- Crowley..."

"I know, angel," Crowley said. He rested his hand against the side of Aziraphale's pale swan's neck, feeling the human pulse beneath mixing with the panicked angel's pulse. For a while, it was hard to distinguish which was which. "I know." There it was. The angel, unreal because of its ethereality, and the human, a body, a human suit, just as unharmonious to the 'normal' world as that which it housed.

_Outside the carriage window a bank had gone up in flames, the first building casuality of those angry hands, the first of hundreds._

Aziraphale's hands tightened again against Crowley's suit. The demon smelled more familiar to him that his faint memories of all of Heav'n. There was no perfume in Heav'n, just clouds and sunshine so bright the clouds became gossamer and transparent. There was also dancing in Heav'n, but it was nothing like a saraband and a ballroom with tinkling champagne glasses and tinkling laughter and Crowley's arms wrapped around him, his cheek against Crowley's shoulder. There was no music now, just a discordant wrongness barrelling at him through the air.

"You'll stay at my apartment tonight, I should think," Crowley said, and through the haze in his soul Aziraphale knew he meant not 'I think' but rather 'I know.' The flat of Crowley's palm pressed gently against Aziraphale's Adam's Apple. His hand was cool, but it only made sense. He was a cold-blooded creature, after all.

"Mm," Aziraphale sighed.

_God watched His children, humans, angels and demons, from where He sat in the arms of chaos, directing and understanding but never once a figure of commiseration. He saw the pieces come sliding into place, and He smiled a smile ever-shifting._

It began to rain, putting out the fire before a little girl was trapped beneath a burning roof beam.

But the damage was done.

Crowley carried Aziraphale up the stairs, hating the idea of being so affected by grief, so susceptible to the crushing force of hate, as angels were. He, too, was a weak creature, but not nearly so weak as the angel he carried in his arms was. It was not his body that was, but his spirit. Aziraphale was the enemy, but he was also a friend. In the scaley depths of himself, beneath the skin and the muscle and the bone, Crowley did not care for him because he could not care, but felt responsible when he had never felt such a way over anything or anyone before in his life.

Aziraphale's face, slackened in sleep, with its fine cheekbones and long lashes and sensitive mouth, had once been merely attractive, and then merely familiar, and then just a mixture of both. Now, it was a source of divine purification that Crowley had not known he was seeking.

But it was just a face.  
  
Aziraphale's face.

Outside, in the light, dispersing drizzle of rain, the people of the city had made a scarecrow of garbage, of straw and the clothing of dead children. With soot to paint the eyes and bad wine for the lips they made a mannequin of the queen and dragged her haphazardly assembled body through the slick streets, stuffing from her shallow, flimsy innards strewn in a winding path behind her.

In effigy, the children of Paris tore the queen limb from limb, exchanging wine for her blood and cake for her heart. 


	7. Chapter Six: Fraternity & Fate

**Chapter Six: Fraternity & Fate**

Belphegor was dancing.

His naked ankles spoke the endless volumes of lust in a Siren's howling, sexual song. _Crash thee on my rocks, die thee in the Flame, petit mort, mort._

He had one breast and it was covered in blood, flesh white, blood red, eyes with no color and all color at once, rolled up into the back of his head as he communed with the base of desire.

You could see each strand of his hair curling as it joined in coitus with the wind.

In the window above him a woman, drunk on power and a man who was not her husband, drunk on old wine, joined together and made the beast with two backs, and Belphegor listened, and he laughed into the air.

He spun in circles by Lepaix's body. 

Love was death, and death was love, and it was a tune to which Belphegor danced endless dances, always moving in circles, the never-ending completion of circles like two bodies slipping into one.

Later there would be birds eating Lepaix's flesh and that, too, would be love, which was as sinful as lust, which was as terrible as hate, as agonizing as grief, as final as death.

Belphegor had dark, dark skin, burned not by the flames of Hell but by the flames of passion, his own, others' -- it was all the same in the end. 

It did not matter who, or where.

It simply mattered what.

Belphegor also had smooth skin, caressed by the last droplets of rain as if it, too, were his lover.

And the world, a pillaged city he had conquered, and the men and women, held as his captives, were his lovers, too.

A lover was a body that fit into your own, against your Scheme of Things, and knew as you did the music of your body, the flutter of your lashes, the flesh of your palm, the taste of your mouth, which led to the revelation of all your secrets.

Belphegor was all one curve, body made of a man and a woman, the first man and the first woman, twined together and smelling faintly of moss.

Some might say he was a demon not of lust but of dance, the sort of dance that poisoned angels and fed the river of demons' bitterness, or perhaps fed bitterness like poison into angels and poisoned demons' bitterness.

A demon and an angel watched him with mixed feelings: the demon in disgust, and the angel in awe.

Israfel thought he had only heard such wonderful music once before, in the halls of the palace, but perhaps that was from the motion of Belphegor's body, too, the sway of his hips and the arc of his wrist and the curve of his lips. but this was sight mixed with sound, making love to each other, a music he had never known which lured all the senses and clenched, tight but warm, in the very center of his belly.

Crowley felt a surge of resentment towards this beast that was so like himself, this beast that shared his knowledge and his supposed shame and his delicious sin and made it not something worth Falling for, the impersonality of Crowley's predicament made clear, made it unnecessary and galling; and that this foulness, so much like his own foulness, was what had caused Aziraphale's previous pain, so that it may as well have been his own clawed hand that had gutted the angel.

Belphegor tapped his feet against the ground, threw his head back, turned in endless circles of sex and sweat and ecstasy and the rain, running in slow rivulets down his cheekbones, high and fine and blackened with soot.

Israfel licked his lips, Crowley felt a knot in his stomach, and Belphegor laughed, the softest, sweetest sound you could ever hope to hear.

_Come and lie thee in my arms, taste me of my flesh, die thee in the song._

It was the smell of apples that lingered, spicy and surreal, upon the humid air, a wet poignancy that Crowley looked back on as an old memory and Israfel as an old scar to which he had never felt the wound's sting.

_This is the fate of all men, the brotherhood of all men, the lust which pounds through my eyes and in their veins, come and taste thee of my mouth, of my flesh, of thy drunken pity, come, and dance thy feet a while, and feel the burn on thy flesh a while, the flames for which you have longed so long when you have not yet tasted or felt of them, and you want thy arms, thy hungry arms, to have._

Belphegor was not singing but his body was, of the flesh beneath your skin, of the want beneath your bones.

Israfel grew hungry, blue eyes hazed over, wanting to have the memory of touch to his fingers and life to his existence, a dance to his music.

Crowley felt the coming of an old sadness, an old bitterness that was not anger but a lingering question of 'what if' echoing, echoing in the recesses of his name.

"Belphegor," Crowley murmured, merely for the sake of following his code of being, keeping his head down as he passed by his brother, the demon Lust, boots on the cobblestones going clack, clack, clack.

Belphegor laughed again, that tendril laugh, that climactic laugh, coital and cozy and snug up against your throat even as it escaped his own.

Somewhere in the city a man and a woman orgasmed together at the same time with two simultaneous cries becoming one, and that sound was Belphegor's laughter.

Israfel felt his breath catch in his throat, for he knew the beast's name, and to know a name was to know all you needed to, for a summoning, perhaps. When you could whisper a name you made such music, and if Israfel whispered that name, the demon would dance to it, of that he was sure.

On the air Crowley could smell it.

The stench of cold comfort, rot and wine.

It revolted him now as once, a rebellious child, he would have taken such pleasure in the way it was everything Heav'n was not.

Israfel could not smell it because he could not smell such foul things; he was unused to them; his nose was untrained to the scent; he was not yet ready for it.

"La libertie, la fraternitie, ou mort," Belphegor sang, and it echoed in the smells and it writhed in his dance and settled upon the tongues of the people, desperate for a song of justice or, in lacking such, a song of rage.

Rage, too, was passion, as was envy, as was greed, a hunger for anger or for another body or for what someone had that you did not or for all the sweetness in the world to dance in your full-yet-empty belly.

Israfel watched.

And Crowley felt the flames leap up inside of him, dancing in outrage, yet dancing in hunger, too. He could not resist his nature. He was what he had become. On the tremulous songs of the air he felt darkness mix with light and saw through the grayness to know that on these city streets there would be no victories, only brotherhood and blood, and that there would be no pure love, for love was impurity itself. You were only pure if you sought nothing. To love was to seek your lover. True love was selflessness, the most impure emotion of them all.

And Crowley ached.

_It was a long time coming._

Back in Crowley's apartment Aziraphale stood naked before his full length mirror. In the half-unreal light of day just beginning to a promise of more rain, he wondered if he could fall through the glass, which would give way around his nudity, and let him pass into another world that had no Heav'n and had no Hell, only himself, complete, no need for that other half which he could not help but wonder about.

That ache was gone to him now, a foreign, distant memory.

He spread his arms out and away from his body and saw with a faint sense, buried deep, of delight in the way that his hipbone curved down into his thigh, and the soft, pale planes of his skin, and the high rise of his neck into his chin. His arms, too, were graceful and slender, and they were nothing like wings.

_Like all such pregnant things, it was a long time coming. At least, a long time planned for. At least, a long time in the making._

Crowley pushed the door open to his bedroom and saw the angel of the Golden Gates all golden befor ehim, a body that belonged to the soul which he knew, which he had curled over the night before to protect, to keep from all pain, and in the blurred air, confused, or perhaps simply uncaring of one side or the other, he knew most things he scoffed at were unimportant, but this was not.

He dropped the bottle of wine to the floor and it did not break, rolled over onto its side, the blood red liquid inside the curve of its belly glinting like rubies in the weak light of his bedroom lamp.

Outside the cry was taken up -- _fraternitie_. It was easier on your back if you had a brother beside you, who knew you, and who knew the great delicacy of your pain, trembling like a dove trapped between your palms. 


	8. Chapter Seven: Grievances & Guillotines

**Chapter Seven: Grievances & Guillotines**

Crowley had silk sheets.

They were very soft against his back, a dark, rich crimson color that pooled around his skin, cooling his body, which seemed to suddenly be so, so warm.  
  
"Oh," Aziraphale said, gasping out, his breath catching in his throat, "oh..."

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was both, it was neither, it was everything and it was nothing all at once.

Times such as these blurred the edges and confused the rules and mixed the definitions, wrought change as easily as if it were hot iron on the anvil. Times such as these made rights wrong and wrongs right. You were true to your instincts, but perhaps not to your self.

Beneath Crowley, Aziraphale's naked body was flushed yet pale, cold as ice but flooded with sudden warmth. The angel trembled and Crowley found it intoxicating.

"I was going to take a bath," Aziraphale whispered, attempting to delineate up to Crowley's unreadable face above him the explanation, the perfectly reasonable explanation, for his own nudity.

"Don't ssssay anything, angel," Crowley interrupted, pressing his palm against Aziraphale's lips, "jusssst let me look at you..."

Golden hair splayed out over the sheets, shimmering, gold on ruby, silk on silk.

Blue eyes wide, lashes shivering around them, a look of delicious confusion in their crystalline depths.

Beneath Crowley's hand, lips parted, very, very soft, breath escaping hotly from them.

Crowley's jacket hung open to reveal he was not wearing a waistcoat, his wide-sleeved shirt all he had cared to put on beneath before he went out earlier that morning. He had planned on restoring Aziraphale's health and spirits with a little good wine, and had also wanted to see the very beginnings of destruction coil through the city streets. Instead he had met with Belphegor, had been tainted with his lust, and had returned to find Aziraphale naked and irresistible before his mirror. A temptation Crowley truly could not resist.

The angel's hips were slender and slim, his legs long and easy to straddle, and his confusion, his pounding human heart, were both delicacies Crowley allowed himself to indulge in, for he enjoyed indulgences. It was enjoyment true to his nature.

"Crowely?" Silence had reigned between them for a while. Aziraphale was unsure, thinking he knew what this was and what it meant but not knowing how to respond, not knowing at all what it was he wanted to do. He harbored for a moment the silly idea of slapping Crowley in the face, for he heard that was what some people did when they were compromised in such a fashion. But he didn't want to, particularly. It was easier to know what he didn't want than what he did, and slapping Crowley was one of those things he did know he did not want to do.

"Your lipssss, "Crowley whispered, "are very ssssoft, angel." Aziraphale felt two separate things inside him melt and fuse afterwards into one.

"Oh," Aziraphale managed, speaking against the palm of Crowley's hand, which was steady, yet almost tickled him as it trapped his words, "thank you."  
  
Crowley kissed him.

"Ssssoft and ssssweet," he breathed against them, head bowed. Aziraphale held tight to his shoulders as if he were drowning. Crowley ran a hand down the center of Aziraphale's chest, fingertips prickling against his skin. It felt just as soft, just as sweet, as he knew it would.  
  
"Perhaps I'd better get dressed," Aziraphale murmured, shifting against the touch, not uncomfortably.

"Perhapssss you'd better sssstay jusssst assss you are."

"...all right."

Crowley turned his face and kissed Aziraphale's knuckles, eyes falling shut to savor the taste properly. Aziraphale trembled.  
  
"Why?" he asked shakily, wanting an answer that would tell him just how to feel, just how to respond, just what to do next.

"Becausssse," Crowley murmured, almost tenderly, "it wassss a long time coming, wassssn't it?"

An age old grievance, Capulets and Montagues, Heav'n and Hell, two houses both alike in dignity, perhaps meant to join, perhaps destined for tragedy, surged up inside the two of them and burned upon their lips. But their bodies blindly moved closer, knowing nothing of feuds or enemies, caring of nothing besides the warmth and familiarity of this never-before-felt embrace.

This time, Aziraphale kissed Crowley, leaning up to search out his lips, and find them, and wonder over them. The demon let his eyes fall shut again, let that inhumanity fade away, let his body press close and enjoy it. An angel was kissing him.

It was as close to Heav'n as he would ever get again, only this sort of Heav'n was different, a pleasure that was your own, what Crowley had been searching for before the Fall, what all angels wanted, whether they knew it or not.

They touched each other. 

They moved slowly against each other, touching always, always touching.

Their kisses were soft on the hard air, sweet on the bitter air, strong on the trembling air.

For a long time they had longed for this, ached for it, but the times had not brought about a means of discovery. They touched now for a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, endless thousands of missed years of touching. Like vintage wine, their feelings, unnamed and uncertain, had aged, grown rich and wise in that aging. 

Their bodies twined together, around, tight, but they simply touched.

There were no words, only their breaths mingling, no sight for their eyes were closed, no sounds save for their breaths mingling, no light and no darkness, only the visions of each other that played endlessly over the backs of their eyelids. They took each other's hands not shakily, fingers weaving together like the threads of time, and they held each other tight, Crowley pulling Aziraphale up into his lap, Aziraphale knowing suddenly how to wrap his long legs around the demon's waist. Without seeing each other they found each other's lips easily and tasted them, each remembering apple orchards long past. 

Aziraphale's cheek was as soft as a rose petal. Crowley had not known that. He did now.

Crowley's fingers were as graceful as a musician's. Aziraphale had not known that. He did now.

In the dim, early morning light they did not have names for each other, only touches and kisses, which grew more familiar, more friendly, as the time passed. On the air there was the faint memory of passion but it, the cardinal sin, the crimson mark, was fat and pregnant with the passion of the people.

Soon, discovery and knowledge would lead to lust, as it always did.

Outside, Belphegor danced.

Outside, Israfel watched him.

Inside, the angel bared himself as he had never before to his God, to his Father, to the Hallowed Holy One, revealing his neck to Crowley's slow kisses, feeding the fire that he had always had, undiscovered and dormant, inside of him.

Outside, the people waited in the rain, sharpening metal for a perfect blade to suit the whims of that which they called Justice.

  



End file.
